Knives on Planes Test TSA Mission 12 Years After Sept. 11

A sign is posted regarding passenger screening in the security area of the American Airlines Inc. terminal at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Photographer: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Transportation Security
Administration’s decision to allow pocket knives on airliners
was meant to signal a philosophical shift: focus less on
screening everyone for everything, and more on terrorist
threats.

Its move has instead sparked condemnation from executives
of Delta Air Lines Inc., AMR Corp. and US Airways Group Inc.;
unions representing flight attendants, pilots and airport
screeners; and members of the Federal Air Marshals Service.

The agency is showing no sign of backing down. Appearing
today at a hearing of the House Transportation Security
subcommittee, TSA Administrator John Pistole defended the new
policy and the process that led to it.

“In the final analysis, somebody has to make a decision
based on the input from all the experts, and do what is right
for the greater good,” Pistole told a group of reporters. “I’m
sticking with that decision.”

The debate gets to the heart of the agency’s mission. Is it
supposed to make flying as safe as possible? Or should it
concede that it can’t prevent everything and focus on stopping
Sept. 11-like terrorist attacks using planes?

Strip-Search Grandma

“It’s a mixed signal,” said Jeff Addicott, director of
the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University in San
Antonio, Texas. “You have a 90-year-old grandma, you’re going
to strip-search her, and then you’re going to allow someone to
carry on a knife? They’re not consistent in their approach
toward security.”

J. David Cox Sr., who represents about 45,000 agency
employees as national president of the American Federation of
Government Employees, said it gave the union less than an hour’s
notice before making the knife change public.

The agency’s screeners think airport lines will clog as
they argue with passengers over whether a knife is longer than
2.36 inches -- the maximum length allowed -- or the handle is
molded, Cox said. He said the backlash could have been avoided
by including the union in discussions before settling on the new
policy, which takes effect April 25.

“There’s a lot of rage in the world,” Cox said. “We just
don’t believe you need knives within the cabin of an airplane.”

Versions of what-was-TSA-thinking have been articulated
often since the policy was announced. A petition on Change.org,
“TSA: DO NOT allow knives on airplanes!” has garnered more
than 10,000 signatures. A similar petition on the White House’s
website, started by a coalition of flight attendant unions, has
picked up more than 29,000 in a week.

Box Cutters

“Before the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the threat of using
commercial aircraft as a weapon was unknown,” the petition
reads. “We know better today. The TSA was created because
blades on airplanes were used to cause this deadly attack.”

Armed with box cutters, the Sept. 11 terrorists hijacked
airliners and then flew them into New York’s World Trade Center
towers and the Pentagon. Box cutters remain banned. TSA
Administrator John Pistole said March 5 there’s “just too much
emotion associated with them.”

Knives on planes are a demonstrated danger, not an
emotional issue, said Diane Horning, mother of Matthew Horning,
who was killed at the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11
attacks. The TSA’s action “shows revisionist history at its
worst,” Horning said in a statement.

“Flight attendants and passengers are the last line of
defense, and commercial aviation must be safe and secure,”
Horning said. “We do need to be able to travel without fear.”

Mixed Reaction

The 2001 law that established the agency calls for it to
prevent another Sept. 11-style catastrophe, said David
Castelveter, a TSA spokesman. Added security in airplane cabins
is a benefit, not a central part of its mandate, he said.

“Our primary responsibility is to stop another terrorist
attack using an aircraft as a weapon,” Castelveter said. “A
benefit of the things we do is preventing harm to passengers and
crews from unruly behavior.”

Delta Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson, in a letter
to Pistole, said allowing items banned for more than 11 years
would do little to improve the passenger flow at airports.
Teamsters General President James Hoffa said the knife ban has
been an integral part of U.S. aviation security, which made
cabins on U.S. flights “the safest in the world.”

Reaction in Congress has been mixed, even within both
political parties.

Representative Richard Hudson, the new chairman of the
Transportation Security subcommittee, said ending the ban on
small knives “balances security with efficiency.” The North
Carolina Republican said he supports the agency’s effort to
focus more on “risk-based” policies.

Lawmakers Opposed

While supportive of the effort to “devote precious
taxpayer dollar to low-risk people, places and things,” Hudson
said the agency will have to work more closely with lawmakers
when rolling out policy changes.

“This open and proactive approach will reduce pushback,
like the kind we’ve seen the last couple of days,” Hudson said.

Representative Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who
leads the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement
his priority is to make the agency “more passenger-friendly and
threat-focused.”

“We know terrorist groups continue to target Americans,
and in particular our aviation system,” McCaul said. One of the
agency’s highest priorities “must be securing commercial
aviation from the type of threats and weapons that could bring
down an aircraft,” he said.

Lawmakers lining up against the change include New York’s
senators, both Democrats, the senior Democrat on McCaul’s
committee and two of that panel’s Republican subcommittee
chairmen, Representatives Peter King of New York and Candice
Miller of Michigan.

No Knives

Representative Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat
running for the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State John
Kerry, decried the change at a March 12 news briefing at
Boston’s Logan International Airport, where two of the planes
hijacked on Sept. 11 took off. He was at the Capitol today with
representatives from five flight-attendant unions, the Teamsters
and the Federal Law Enforcement Officer Association to promote
the “No Knives Act,” a bill he introduced to overturn
Pistole’s decision.

At today’s House hearing, several Democrats brandished
items that have been banned and asked Pistole why they weren’t
considered a threat. Representative Bennie Thompson of
Mississippi, the senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security
Committee, held a hockey stick over his head and pointed it
toward the TSA leader.

“How could this not be considered a big deal?” he asked.

Cockpit Windows

The agency has concluded there’s no scenario in which a
terrorist holding a hostage outside the cockpit could force a
pilot to yield control of the plane, said Laura Glading,
president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants,
which represents more than 16,000 American Airlines employees.
While cockpit doors are secured, they have windows, she said.

“They’re going to look out there and possibly see a knife
to a passenger, a child, a flight attendant, it could be their
wife, and they’re going to be told to open the door or else,”
Glading said. “To put the pilots in that position, when they
are responsible for the safety and security of the entire
airplane, is just crazy.”

Allianz SE, the Munich, Germany-based global insurer that
underwrites the liability of U.S. airlines, thinks the new
policy is unexpected and inappropriate, given people are already
used to leaving pocket knives behind, said Joe Strickland, head
of aviation, Americas, for the company’s global corporate and
security unit in New York.

Assessing Risk

It’s not clear whether the policy will affect insurance
rates, Strickland said. The change isn’t in the interest of the
public or flight crews, he said.

“If someone has enough malevolent ingenuity, they can find
ways to hurt people,” Strickland said. “But let’s take out the
most obvious things.”

Pistole, who was deputy director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation before joining the transportation security agency
in July 2010, reminded lawmakers there was a similar outcry in
2005, when TSA lifted a ban on scissors, knitting needles and
even smaller knives. In more than seven years since, there have
been no reported attacks on aircraft using those items as
weapons, he said.

Speaking to reporters today, Pistole said the agency would
“socialize it more broadly” if it makes more changes to the
prohibited-items list. A lot of the opposition is coming from
flight attendants, he said.

“They’re very vocal,” Pistole said. “They’re very
effective at expressing their dissatisfaction. They were very
vocal in 2005, and yet there have been no incidents.”

Other Changes

The agency’s changes to its “prohibited items” list,
which also include permitting hockey sticks, plastic Wiffle
Ball-style bats and as many as two golf clubs, were based on
recommendations of an agency working group that included
intelligence experts, Castelveter said. Outside stakeholders
were informed once the decision was made and weren’t consulted
because the assessment included classified information, he said.

“Where there’s an opportunity to consult, we do,”
Castelveter said. “Where we have to make decisions that are
security-related, we don’t.”

Even tepid support from its congressional overseers marks
progress for the agency, said Stewart Verdery, a former
assistant administrator for policy and planning at the Homeland
Security Department. In 2006, when the agency first tried to end
a ban on butane cigarette lighters, Verdery said criticism from
lawmakers caused the agency to put off the change.

“In an era of limited budgets, TSA has to focus on
catastrophic attacks,” said Verdery, now a partner with the
Monument Policy Group, a Washington-based lobbying firm. “TSA
isn’t the agency that’s set up to guarantee flight attendants’
security.”